All day long I was fishing in the Great Beyond called Cybernet for an appropriate Halloween's story. For those of my readers not familiar with American customs, Halloween's (tonight!) is the night where children dress up in scary costumes, many of them in skeleton or witches' and devils' attire, and go begging for candy, door to door, by shouting rather rudely: "Trick or Treat!"
In other words, it is a child's extortion game. It is a pagan remnant, and I have always found it offensive.
And just this moment I've found exactly what I was looking for - and all I can say is "Trick or Treat!"
Here is another one for history!
Titled "Holocaust flame goes out for Germany's Schroeder", this small item tells us the following, thanks to a small Reuters release, dated today:
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder mistakenly extinguished Israel's eternal memorial flame for the "six million" (sic) Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust.
At a sombre ceremony in Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Schroeder turned a handle that was supposed to make the flame rise. It went out instead.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who accompanied Schroeder to Yad Vashem's Hall of Remembrances, stepped forward to try to help, but was unsuccessful.
Finally, a technician used a gas lighter to bring the flame to life again.
The entire incident was witnessed by a Reuters photographer.
Schroeder was in Israel as part of a Middle East tour. Visiting dignitaries are taken as a matter of course to Yad Vashem to pay their respects to the Holocaust dead.
***E-mail this story to a friend!***
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Thought for the Day:
"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man but coaxed downstairs, one step at a time."
(Mark Twain)
Back to Table of Contents of the Oct. 2000 ZGrams